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Tony Dejak/Associated Press
The Nets' Brook Lopez was stopped by the Cavaliers' Tristan Thompson (13) and Anderson Varejao in the third quarter. Lopez finished with 21 points.
CLEVELAND — Kevin Garnett lacked the precise word to describe the prodigious anxiety and eagerness he and his teammates felt walking onto the court here Wednesday night, so he contorted his face into an exaggerated snarl and let out a comical growl.
It was a light moment from Garnett, the Nets' intense new forward, and he allowed himself a quick laugh, even as he rued his team's season-opening 98-94 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"But it felt like that," he said. "Everybody wanted it right here, right now, and that's not the process."
The process, he said, will be gradual. It will require work and unity. And, he added, "We've all got to be patient with that process."
After an exciting gestation period, the curtain has been raised on the Nets' ambitious experiment. It became clear during the rocky first game that good or bad, it has the potential to be fascinating.
The Nets' ownership this summer engineered a roster overhaul that rocketed their payroll to $101 million and their luxury-tax bill to $82 million. It was money spent with a purpose.
"Hopefully the finished product will be us hoisting up the trophy," said Jason Terry, who was traded alongside Garnett and Paul Pierce from the Boston Celtics. "We know it's a long haul."
On Wednesday, there were flashes of the traits that could propel the team to greatness, but just as many glimpses of the roadblocks that could hamper them. The Nets have expressed hope that they can become a freewheeling team on both ends of the court. But because of assorted injuries and rest schedules, Wednesday night was the first time the Nets' five starters played a competitive game together.
At several points, it showed. The offense, as a whole, lacked rhythm. There were superfluous passes and ones that just missed their mark.
"We looked good at times, but then we looked a little out of sync at times — maybe being a little bit too unselfish at times when we could have just made plays," said Joe Johnson, who scored 13 points and was 3 of 10 from the field.
The defense was wobbly, too. The Cavaliers' fleet guards ran intricate patterns around Nets defenders, who seemed hesitant and half a step slow. Multiple players after the game repeated the same concept: There are 24 seconds on an N.B.A. shot clock, and the Nets on Wednesday seemed only to defend the first 22.
The Nets were outrebounded, 48-37, and they allowed 16 offensive rebounds in all.
"We gave up last-second shots, and we gave up offensive rebounds in key possessions," said Pierce, who scored the Nets first 6 points and finished with 17. "To be a championship team, we're going to have to clean those things up."
But they were doomed when the Cavaliers made the most of a second chance at the end of the game. Brook Lopez (21 points) finished an alley-oop layup to tie the game at 91-91 with 1 minute 4 seconds remaining, and Kyrie Irving of the Cavaliers missed a 3-pointer on the next possession. But Earl Clark pulled down the offensive board, letting Irving get the ball back, complete a winding dribbling sequence, and pass to Anderson Varejao, who hit a 14-foot jumper to put the Cavaliers ahead.
The Nets came down the court having drawn up a play to get Johnson the last shot. But when he saw a double team, he passed to Pierce, who attempted an 18-foot step-back shot but missed, essentially sinking the Nets' comeback.
"I think every shot I shoot is good," Pierce said.
Further hampering them, the Nets were not at full strength. Deron Williams, who is recovering from a sprained right ankle, was limited to 22 minutes, which meant he was unavailable for the fourth quarter.
And Jason Kidd, who is entering his first season as the Nets' coach, had to watch the game from the team hotel as he began serving a two-game suspension issued after his guilty plea last July to a drunken-driving charge.
Joe Prunty, an assistant coach, was designated as the coach shortly before the game.
That would not be a big deal, the Nets insisted, considering the basketball intelligence they put into uniform each night. Intuition, more than set plays or a coach's instruction, would guide them on the court, they said.
But as Wednesday's disjointed effort showed, that alone will not be enough, and the growing process will need to continue.
REBOUNDS
Andrei Kirilenko was inactive as he continued to recover from back spasms that forced him to miss the Nets' last five preseason games. He said he hoped to play Friday night. ...Andrew Bynum received a huge ovation when he checked into the game in the first quarter. Bynum, 26, last appeared in a game in May 2012, when he was with the Los Angeles Lakers. He missed the entire 2012-2013 season with the Philadelphia 76ers because of knee problems. Bynum, who joined the Cavaliers on a two-year contract, scored 3 points in eight minutes.
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Obama Defends Health Care Law: In Boston, President Obama vowed he would not let Republicans try to turn the health exchange website's problems into ammunition with the aim of overturning the health care law.
BOSTON — The White House on Wednesday blended expressions of contrition for the troubled rollout of its health care law with an aggressive rejection of Republican criticism of it, as the administration sought a political strategy to blunt the fallout from weeks of technical failures and negative coverage.
While Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, apologized profusely during a politically charged hearing on Capitol Hill, President Obama traveled to Massachusetts to argue forcefully that the Affordable Care Act will eventually be just as successful as the similar plan pioneered by Mitt Romney, his onetime rival and a former governor of the state.
Speaking in the historic Faneuil Hall, where Mr. Romney signed the Massachusetts plan into law, the president also took "full responsibility" for the malfunctioning health care website and promised to fix it. But he pledged to "grind it out" over the weeks and months ahead to ensure the law's success and prove its Republican critics wrong.
"We are going to see this through," Mr. Obama vowed, pounding his fist on the podium as the audience roared with approval.
The dual messages from Mr. Obama and Ms. Sebelius over the course of the day reflect a recognition by officials inside the White House that while apologies are in order, the administration cannot let Republicans expand concerns about the HealthCare.gov website into a broader indictment of the law.
Senior advisers to the president said they understood that the bungled rollout of the insurance marketplace has given Republicans another opportunity to litigate the political case against the health care law. But they said they viewed the weeks ahead as a period of inevitable improvement that will vindicate their position.
"The weight of that momentum will have a positive impact," one senior administration official said, requesting anonymity to talk about White House strategy planning. "Really it's about blocking and tackling and getting that work done."
With Republicans showing no sign of backing off, the challenge for Mr. Obama and Democrats in the months to come will be to deflect political attacks that unfairly demonize the health care law while acknowledging its shortcomings. Achieving that nuance could prove tricky for an administration whose top health official, Ms. Sebelius, on Wednesday called the rollout of the online insurance marketplace a "debacle."
Ms. Sebelius told lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that she was as surprised as anyone when the website collapsed on Oct. 1 under pressure from millions of users and was crippled by technical problems in subsequent days. While she was aware of the risks in a big information technology project, she said, "no one indicated that this could possibly go this wrong."
Ms. Sebelius told the committee: "Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible."
The shift in strategy from the White House comes as new challenges emerge for the law. The problem-plagued website crashed again just before Ms. Sebelius began testifying in front of a skeptical congressional panel. And officials acknowledged that the federal insurance marketplace for small businesses, which had already been delayed a month from Oct. 1, would not open until the end of November.
In three and a half grueling hours of testimony, Ms. Sebelius gamely defended the troubled rollout of the law and apologized for what had gone wrong. But nothing she said could overcome the stark message displayed on a large video screen showing a page from HealthCare.gov: "The system is down at the moment. We are experiencing technical difficulties and hope to have them resolved soon. Please try again later."
Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, said the administration had not properly tested the security of the insurance website, which receives financial information on consumers seeking subsidies to help pay their premiums.
Mr. Rogers read from a government memo that said security controls for the federal exchange had not been fully tested as of Sept. 27. This creates a potentially "high risk" for the exchange, said the memo, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The memo said that security controls would be "completely tested within the next six months."
Michael D. Shear reported from Boston, and Robert Pear from Washington.
BOSTON — The Fenway Park crowd was eager all night, standing, yelling, cheering. All that pent-up energy exploded as Shane Victorino crushed a Michael Wacha fastball high off the Green Monster, scoring three runs. Victorino pounded his chest and yelled as he advanced to third base. It seemed over then. The Red Sox had the lead.
For the first time since 1918, Boston would celebrate a World Series-clinching victory by the home team at this historic park. The Red Sox jumped out in front early against the St. Louis Cardinals and rolled to a 6-1 win, taking the Series, four games to two.
David Ortiz, now a three-time World Series champion, was named the most valuable player.
Victorino started the party with a two-out, bases-loaded double in the third inning. Wacha, the brilliant Cardinals rookie, finally seemed mortal. He had allowed just three runs in his previous 29 innings this postseason. He was pulled midway through the fourth and walked off the mound clearly distraught.
He was eventually charged with six runs.
Each time the Red Sox rallied, in the third and the fourth innings, Ortiz had been intentionally walked only to come around to score.
John Lackey pitched six and two-thirds strong innings. He worked around nine hits, allowing one run and striking out five batters. The crowd gave him an ovation as he walked off the mound with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh. Lackey tipped his hat. Then Junichi Tazawa finished the inning.
The Boston fans spent the rest of the night counting down outs until another championship, their team's third in 10 years.
It wasn't a save situation, but Koji Uehara came on to pitch the ninth for the Sox. He got Jay and Descalso to fly out to Gomes in left for the first two outs. The fans were on their feet, chanting, "Koji, Koji." Uehara struck out Carpenter to end the game and enable the Sox to win a World Series in Boston for the first time in 95 years.
— Jim Luttrell
After a single and a double, the Cardinals broke Lackey's shutout on Beltran's single. Farrell came out ready make a move, it seemed, but after Lackey told him, "This is my game," he said something into his glove and persuaded Farrell to leave him in the game. A walk to Holliday loaded the bases, and Farrell wasn't about to be Grady Little. Tazawa entered and recorded the third out.
I really wish John Lackey wore a see-through glove.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) 31 Oct 13
— Jim Luttrell
That was Ortiz's first strikeout in this World Series. It came as the crowd chanted, "M.V.P.! M.V.P.!" Barring an epic collapse by Boston, he's your M.V.P. in a landslide, no?
His statistics over six games: .688 batting average, two homers, six R.B.I., seven walks and seven runs scored. Mr. October 2.0.
Cardinals watching too many @whitesox instructional videos during that flight delay Tuesday.
— rickbozich (@rickbozich) 31 Oct 13
The Red Sox need 12 outs to clinch the World Series. Everyone here seems antsy. So in the meantime, here's an arbitrary list of Game 6 heroes in order of "clutchness": Shane Victorino, David Ortiz, John Lackey, Stephen Drew, Mike Napoli, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jonny Gomes, everyone else.
Also, you know victory is close when the the Red Sox feel comfortable enough to send an email to the news media with this subject line: Rules and Regulations in the Event of a Red Sox Game 6 Clinch.
Molina has some words for Wacha before the rookie walks off the mound. His night is done. He went three and two-thirds innings, allowing five hits, four walks (including two intentional walks to Ortiz), and six runs.
His terrific postseason ends on a sour note, but surely Molina reassured him the Cardinals would not have made it this far without him.
Stephen Drew had not homered in his previous 51 at-bats this postseason. He had hit 13 homers all season. But he takes Wacha deep there.
Another opportunity lost for the Cardinals. Pedroia makes a rare error, misplaying a Molina grounder at second base (after having just won a Gold Glove), and the Cardinals have two on, one out, and can't score.
Lackey is through four scoreless innings, with 57 pitches.
Each time the Cards have had two on, Matt Adams and David Freese, the 2011 World Series most valuable player, have made outs.
That was maybe the only way the Red Sox could load the bases against Wacha: Ellsbury singles, Ortiz is intentionally walked, Gomes is hit by a pitch. Shane Victorino then doubles high off the Green Monster. All three score. And what a slide by Gomes, getting under the tag of Molina.
Victorino may be the hero for the second time this postseason in a Game 6. Remember, he hit that grand slam in the A.L.C.S. against Detroit.
That double by Victorino, a switch-hitter? He was batting right-handed against a dominant righty in Wacha. Find out why here.
If the Cardinals lose tonight, much will be made of how they were delayed leaving St. Louis on Tuesday because of mechanical problems with their plane. It was said they were stuck on the runway for about seven hours.
Mike Matheny said the players "hung out with their families. They hung out with each other. There was a lot of fooling around going on. Guys were making the best of a situation they knew we didn't have any control over.
"How that affects us? I don't think it really does. We've been resilient, but you take what comes, and we adjust and get ready for the next day."
In a similar bottom half of the second, score that under "missed opportunities that could come back to haunt the Red Sox": two runners on, no outs, and Xander Bogaerts, Stephen Drew and David Ross go down in order.
Score that under "missed opportunities that could come back to haunt the Cardinals": two runners on, no outs, and Matt Adams, David Freese and Jon Jay go down in order.
Allen Craig this series: 5 for 13, after singling off the Green Monster. He had two big ninth-inning hits in Games 3 and 4. Having not played since Sept. 4 before this series, he's done all that could be expected of him.
Wacha was careful there with Ortiz, walking him on nine pitches. Other than that, and Pedroia's near home run, Wacha was Wacha. He struck out Ellsbury and Napoli. He's at 18 pitches. If he can get through six innings relatively unscathed, the Cardinals will have to be pleased.
Fenway would have exploded if Pedroia's ball had stayed fair there. Reminiscent of Carlton Fisk. Pedroia missed a homer by only a few feet. Maybe he should've waved harder.
About two hours before the first pitch, Yawkey Way was flooded with people. A four-man brass band played. Some man was walking around on stilts. People had red B's painted on their faces. A magician did card tricks. Vendors stood on crates, selling World Series pennants and programs. There was beer, and plenty of it.
I didn't see it, but it was said that Steve Horgan — the police officer who threw his arms into the air as David Ortiz's grand slam cleared the wall and Torii Hunter flipped over it in Game 2 of the A.L.C.S. — posed for pictures with fans.
Lines were outrageous outside several bars up and down Lansdowne Street. Tickets to the game were pricey. Accoridng to TiqIQ, which collects data on tickets for resale, the average price for a ticket on the secondary market was $1,979, making it the most expensive baseball ticket the company had tracked.
Earlier in the Series, I talked about how Huey Lewis and the News performed one of my favorite versions of the national anthem. Well, the Dropkick Murphys didn't match that four-part harmony, but it was fun to see one of my favorite bands NOT be irreverent for once. And it's not often that the anthem singers get to do a second song, but the fans at Fenway were on their feet and singing along to "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" as the band was accompanied by Irish step dancers. Smart move by the Sox to get the crowd revved up, as if it needed more incentive.
If you weren't fortunate enough to be at Fenway to see the band, here's the song you missed.
— Jim Luttrell
It's supposed to be a clear and chilly night at Fenway, with the temperature dipping into the 40s.
Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino are back in the Red Sox' lineup. Victorino missed the last two games with back tightness. Manager John Farrell will stick with David Ross over Jarrod Saltalamacchia at catcher. For the Cardinals, Allen Craig, who has a bothersome left foot, will be the designated hitter.
1) Matt Carpenter, 2B ; 2) Carlos Beltran, RF ; 3) Matt Holliday, LF ; 4) Allen Craig, DH; 5) Yadier Molina, C ; 6) Matt Adams, 1B; 7) David Freese, 3B ; 8) Jon Jay, CF ; 9) Daniel Descalso, SS; Pitching: Michael Wacha, RHP
1) Jacoby Ellsbury, CF ; 2) Dustin Pedroia, 2B; 3) David Ortiz, DH; 4) Mike Napoli, 1B ; 5) Jonny Gomes, LF ; 6) Shane Victorino, RF; 7) Xander Bogaerts, 3B; 8) Stephen Drew, SS ; 9) David Ross, C; Pitching: John Lackey, RHP
BOSTON — For much of the 20th century, the Boston Red Sox were a symbol of frustration and pain for an entire region. As popular as they were in their corner of the nation, either they were good enough to lose in agonizing fashion on baseball's grandest stage, or they were just plain bad.
But that all changed in 2004 when the Red Sox ended an 86-year championship drought, and now their fortunes have changed so dramatically that winning titles has become commonplace.
The latest victory came Wednesday night, when the Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1, in Game 6 of the World Series to take the series, four games to two. They earned the third jewel in their championship crown over the last 10 years, and their eighth over all.
In addition, for the first time since 1918, Boston was able to celebrate the victory at home, winning in front of an announced crowd of 38,447 at Fenway Park and many thousands more who crammed the city streets and bars to proclaim those formerly scarce words that are now often repeated: The Boston Red Sox won the World Series.
Even after the team's horrendous late-season collapse in 2011 and a last-place finish in 2012, Red Sox fans have become so accustomed to winning that, once their scruffy team had won Game 5, Game 6 had an air of inevitability.
By the time Boston had taken a 6-0 lead in the fourth inning, the cool air at Fenway Park vibrated in anticipation of the party that would soon follow.
David Ortiz, whose contributions to the Red Sox' last three championships cannot be overstated, was named the most valuable player of the series. He hit two home runs, knocked in six runs, scored seven more, batted .688 and had a staggering .760 on-base percentage.
The Cardinals finally wised up in Game 6, walking him four times, three times intentionally: it was the only way to prevent him from doing damage.
Two Red Sox hitters with little success in the first five games came through instead.
Shane Victorino drove in four runs, with a bases-clearing double in the third inning and a run-scoring single in the fourth, an inning that began with a home run by Stephen Drew against Michael Wacha. Drew had batted .080 this postseason entering the game.
Wacha, a 22-year-old rookie, had been unbeaten in the postseason and had not even allowed a hit with runners in scoring position. But he was charged with six runs in only three and two-thirds innings Wednesday. Red Sox starter John Lackey scrapped and battled his way through six and two-thirds inning to earn the win.
The victory was the second in a World Series clincher of Lackey's career. He also won Game 7 of the 2002 World Series, for the Anaheim Angels.
Lackey looked beatable as the Cardinals hit several balls hard in the first two innings. But the Red Sox had fielders in place to catch most of them, and Lackey grew stingier until the seventh.
The Cardinals, trailing by 6-0, scored a run in that inning and then had runners at first and third with two outs. With Matt Holliday coming to the plate, Red Sox Manager John Farrell emerged from the dugout. As he strolled to the mound, though, Lackey gave him a stern look and appeared to say, "This is my guy," as well as a few words obscured behind his glove.
Farrell left him in, but Lackey walked Holliday, so Junichi Tazawa was summoned from the bullpen. Tazawa got Allen Craig to ground to first, eliciting a roar from the fans.
Victorino, who had missed the previous two games because of back spasms, gave the Red Sox an early 3-0 lead with his double, pounding his chest just as he did in the Red Sox' pennant-clinching game against the Detroit Tigers, when he hit a decisive grand slam.
From there, the Red Sox were simply too good for St. Louis once again.
In 2004, the Red Sox swept the Cardinals, winning Game 4 in St. Louis, and in 2007, they swept the Colorado Rockies, taking the final game in Denver. The Red Sox had lost in excruciating fashion in their four previous World Series appearances, in 1946 and 1967 to the Cardinals, in 1975 to the Cincinnati Reds and in 1986 to the Mets, each time in seven games.
For decades it seemed as if 1918 would remain their last title, especially with the mighty Yankees putting up road blocks in their league and division.
But along came Ortiz, who helped erase the Red Sox' jinx against the Yankees in 2004 and carry Boston over a barrier it had been unable to cross for 86 years.
What made this year's title even more notable was that the Red Sox completed a worst-to-first transformation, rebounding from a last-place finish in the American League East in 2012, shedding a negative reputation and replacing it with scruffy beards to signify team unity.
The team brought in Farrell to replace Bobby Valentine and several new players, including Victorino, Drew, Mike Napoli, Jonny Gomes and closer Koji Uehara, to change the toxic culture of the clubhouse.
Second baseman Dustin Pedroia said the Red Sox bonded in spring training and then were motivated after the Boston Marathon bombings to use baseball to help the city heal.
"Because of what happened to this city," he said, "we wanted to do something special and make everybody happy and proud."
The Red Sox' roster also featured four key players from the 2007 team: Ortiz; Jon Lester, who went 2-0 in this Series; Jacoby Ellsbury; and Pedroia, who said that despite the misery of 2012, and even the collapse of 2011, he still felt this team had the potential to win again.
"Yeah, my expectations of our team didn't change from last spring training to this one," he said before Wednesday's game. "Your goal playing for the Red Sox every year is to try to be at this point and win the World Series. Next year we're going to come in, and our goal is to win the World Series, and that's never going to change here."
For 86 years, that goal was unattainable. Now it is almost routine.
Rhona Wise/European Pressphoto Agency
The Red Sox celebrated after Michael Wacha, right, gave up a three-run double to Shane Victorino. Wacha, who had been 4-0 in the postseason, allowed six runs in three and two-thirds innings.
BOSTON — They don't even worry about the Red Sox here anymore. Why would they? At Fenway Park, the fans sing:
Every little thing gonna be all right.
It is more than the at-bat anthem for Shane Victorino, the sprightly right fielder who drove in four runs in Game 6 of the World Series on Wednesday as the Red Sox won their third championship in 10 seasons. After decades of well-founded fatalism, it is now a way of life.
The Red Sox dumped the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1, to win their first title at home in 95 years. After championships on the road in 2004 and 2007, it was bound to happen, sooner or later. The Red Sox have the farm system, the finances and the fan base to be the envy of the majors for years to come.
"People call this the cathedral of baseball, and I absolutely, 100 percent agree — this place is a special place to play," Victorino said. "It's been great. It's been fun. We all understand the magnitude of tonight's game, the fact that we haven't won a championship in Fenway since 1918."
Victorino spoke before the game in a red brick interview room off the clubhouse, his headphones on the table in front of him. Written across was the slogan "Boston Strong," the city's rallying cry after the bombings at the Boston Marathon in April.
In his on-field interview with Fox television after Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, when he knocked out Detroit with a grand slam, Victorino repeated that phrase, reflexively but with passion: Boston strong. Boston strong.
Twelve of the 25 players on the World Series roster had never played for the Red Sox before this season. Yet they took to their new surroundings, some as a condition of employment.
The Red Sox, with a chance to reshape their roster after a bailout trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers last August, signed seven free agents last off-season, mostly for their talent and affordability. But they had seen the corrosive effect that miserable players could have on the clubhouse, and as they revamped a last-place team, they made sure the imports really wanted to be here.
"We knew we would be tested, and there would be skepticism, rightfully so, along the way," General Manager Ben Cherington said. "So we felt like if we had a core, kind of a critical mass of guys in the clubhouse who really wanted to be there for the right reasons, they would embrace everything that came along with being in Boston.
"You can either see playing in New York or Boston as an opportunity or a burden," Cherington added. "The more guys who see it as an opportunity, the more likely they are to get through the adversity or whatever happens during a season. So it wasn't so much a character question as, 'Is he a good guy?' It was more: 'What's his motivation? Does he want to be here?' "
Their will to stay in Boston will be tested this winter, with Stephen Drew, Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Napoli and Jarrod Saltalamacchia all facing free agency. Teams change every season, and the bearded brigade might even shave this winter.
They grew the beards as a form of team bonding. They know they look ridiculous.
"Some Detroit fan was getting on me and I started laughing, and he's like, 'I can't believe you're laughing,' " catcher David Ross said after the A.L.C.S. "I love fans, you know? It's cool. As long as you're not angry and being vulgar or obscene, it's fun to come to the yard and make fun of my beard. I know it looks terrible. You're not telling me anything I don't know."
Ross stayed in the lineup for Game 6, instead of Saltalamacchia, because his double off Adam Wainwright had brought in the go-ahead run on Monday. Saltalamacchia went hitless in the World Series, but he had the winning hit in Game 2 of the A.L.C.S., a ninth-inning single to left for Boston's first win against the Tigers.
Before Wednesday, the combined World Series average of all Red Sox not named David Ortiz was .151, with Ortiz the outlier at .733. But almost all have had big moments in October, despite setting a postseason record for strikeouts by an offense.
Napoli homered for the only run in Game 3 in Detroit, and he homered again in a one-run victory in Game 5. Xander Bogaerts, 21, won the starting job at third base in the middle of the A.L.C.S., becoming the youngest Red Sox player in a postseason lineup since Babe Ruth. Bogaerts entered Wednesday's game with the team's best postseason average, after Ortiz's.
Jonny Gomes had one hit through the first five World Series games, and it was a three-run, go-ahead homer in Game 4. Dustin Pedroia doubled to start the tiebreaking rally in Game 5. Ellsbury singled to start a three-run outburst in the third inning of Game 6, then doubled in the three-run fourth.
The Red Sox faced a gantlet of ace starters in the postseason, and beat them all: Matt Moore and David Price of Tampa Bay; Justin Verlander, Anibal Sanchez and Max Scherzer of Detroit; Adam Wainwright (twice) and Michael Wacha of St. Louis.
Jon Lester and John Lackey started nine of Boston's 16 postseason games, winning seven. Lackey, once reviled as a free-agent flop, rebuilt his arm and his physique, worked a crucial inning of relief in Game 4, and then started and won the clincher.
When Lackey faltered in the seventh, Junichi Tazawa got a groundout to leave the bases loaded. Brandon Workman followed, and Koji Uehara — Boston's third option as closer this season — completed a magical season, for himself and his team.
"Playing in front of these fans every single night, it doesn't get any better," Victorino had said, a few hours earlier. "I'm excited to see what happens. And as I said, we've still got a long, tough task ahead of us."
The task lasted only nine innings, and it was not really tough. The Red Sox left no doubt, in Game 6 or in the larger scope of the sport. They belong on top, again. Every little thing is all right.
Associated Press
Bob Gibson, a future Hall of Famer, with catcher Tim McCarver after his complete-game victory over Boston in Game 7 of the 1967 World Series.
When Boston and St. Louis first faced each other in the World Series, in 1946, there wasn't a single African-American in either dugout. As the Red Sox and the Cardinals meet again 67 years later, there is one.
But by charting the franchises' four postseason battles — 1946, 1967, 2004 and now 2013 — one can also chart the ebb and flow of black Americans first into, and more recently away from, Major League Baseball. The question baseball faces is whether it is too late to stop that trend.
"The trend can be reversed," said David James, the director of Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, a youth program operated by M.L.B. "Baseball has done a good job of recognizing that there is a problem and has put in a number of things each year to try to reverse those trends."
James added: "It's going to take a lot of time for the impact of some of these programs, particularly at the youth level, to start to develop players that move up to major league potential."
The first Red Sox-Cardinals World Series came a year after the Red Sox were pressured into holding a tryout for Jackie Robinson, and a year before Robinson broke baseball's color barrier. By the time the teams met again in 1967, the African-American presence in baseball was 13.6 percent, the highest it had been. The Red Sox, the last major league team to integrate, fielded a starting lineup that included African-American stars like George Scott and Reggie Smith. They lost to a Cardinals team that was led by the Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Lou Brock.
The number of black American players in baseball would continue to rise for two decades, reaching a peak in the 1980s, when nearly one in five major league players was a black American. But it had long been falling by the time the Cardinals and the Red Sox renewed their rivalry in the 2004 Series, when the most notable black players in the Series were Reggie Sanders and Tony Womack.
This fall, the only black American on either roster is Boston's Quintin Berry, a reserve outfielder whose only World Series appearance has been as a pinch-runner in Game 4.
Where have all the African-American players gone?
One answer is obvious: Black Americans have gravitated to basketball and football.
"Back in the '30s, '40s, '50s, and even into the '60s, to a considerable degree, basketball and football weren't the games," said Lawrence Hogan, a senior professor of history at Union County College in New Jersey and a scholar on black baseball.
"As society has changed and our culture has changed, they've become the games, to a point where a lot of people question whether baseball is the national pastime any longer," he said.
Hogan, 69, said he still considers baseball our national pastime, but he understands the preferences of a younger generation.
Another answer for the decline in black players is that their places have been filled by a growing Latin presence. Many players groomed in team-sponsored academies — especially in the Dominican Republic — make up 27.7 percent of M.L.B. rosters. This season, despite aggressive developmental programs like Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, the percentage of black American players is roughly 8.5, an unimpressive number.
Baseball seems to understand it, too: Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities began a junior division in 2009, introducing players as young as 5 to the game, before the pull of football and basketball becomes too strong.
A few years ago I asked Carl Crawford, then with the Tampa Bay Rays, how he had avoided the football-basketball dragnet. Actually, he said, he hadn't. Crawford, now with the Los Angeles Dodgers, was a three-sport star at Jefferson Davis High School in Houston. He accepted a football scholarship to Nebraska. "The baseball draft was in June; I ended up getting drafted," he said. "I'm from a poor area. When baseball came with a contract, basically, that was it. It was the money that changed my mind. Baseball kind of chose me; I didn't really choose baseball."
Crawford, who grew in a predominantly black community in Houston, said the reason he sustained his interest in baseball was that his early experiences took place in predominantly black youth leagues. The equipment was furnished free, but the key was that the sport was a natural and daily part of his community.
By AP
James Clapper's Testimony in 2 Minutes: Top intelligence officials defended their operations before a House committee on Tuesday as they faced growing criticism and calls for a congressional review of the nation's surveillance efforts.
WASHINGTON — The nation's top spymaster said on Tuesday that the White House had long been aware in general terms of the National Security Agency's overseas eavesdropping, stoutly defending the agency's intelligence-gathering methods and suggesting possible divisions within the Obama administration.
The official, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the N.S.A. had kept senior officials in the National Security Council informed of surveillance it was conducting in foreign countries. He did not specifically say whether President Obama was told of these spying efforts, but he appeared to challenge assertions in recent days that the White House had been in the dark about some of the agency's practices.
Mr. Clapper and the agency's director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, vigorously rejected suggestions that the agency was a rogue institution, trawling for information on ordinary citizens and leaders of America's closest allies, without the knowledge of its Washington overseers.
Their testimony came amid mounting questions about how the N.S.A. collects information overseas, with Republicans and Democrats calling for a congressional review, lawmakers introducing a bill that would curb its activities and Mr. Obama poised to impose his own constraints, particularly on monitoring the leaders of friendly nations. At the same time, current and former American intelligence officials say there is a growing sense of anger with the White House for what they see as attempts to pin the blame for the controversy squarely on them.
General Alexander said news media reports that the N.S.A. had vacuumed up tens of millions of telephone calls in France, Italy and Spain were "completely false." That data, he said, is at least partly collected by the intelligence services of those countries and provided to the N.S.A.
Still, both he and Mr. Clapper said that spying on foreign leaders — even those of allies — was a basic tenet of intelligence tradecraft and had gone on for decades. European countries, Mr. Clapper said, routinely seek to listen in on the conversations of American leaders.
"Some of this reminds me of the classic movie 'Casablanca' — 'My God, there's gambling going on here,' " Mr. Clapper said, twisting the line from the movie uttered by a corrupt French official who feigns outrage at the very activity in which he avidly partakes.
Asked whether the White House knows about the N.S.A.'s intelligence-gathering, including on foreign leaders, Mr. Clapper said, "They can and do." But, he added, "I have to say that that does not extend down to the level of detail. We're talking about a huge enterprise here, with thousands and thousands of individual requirements."
The White House has faced criticism for the N.S.A.'s surveillance practices since the first revelations by a former agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, in June. But in recent weeks it has struggled to quell a new diplomatic storm over reports that the agency monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for more than a decade. White House officials said that the president did not know of that surveillance, but that he has told Ms. Merkel that the United States is not monitoring her phone now and would not in the future.
On Wednesday, a delegation of senior German officials is scheduled to meet at the White House with Mr. Clapper, the president's national security adviser, Susan E. Rice; his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco; and other officials.
Several current and former American officials said that presidents and their senior national security advisers have long known about which foreign leaders the United States spied on.
"It would be unusual for the White House senior staff not to know the exact source and method of collection," said Michael Allen, a National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration and a former staff director for the House Intelligence Committee. "That information helps a policy maker assess the reliability of the intelligence."
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
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A new security management team instituted a more aggressive loss prevention strategy. Security personnel said they were encouraged to "take chances" in stopping suspicious customers, even if it meant intercepting innocent people. Bad grabs, they said they were told, were part of the business.
The number of contacts with the Police Department, made when security workers suspected a person had been shoplifting or engaging in credit card fraud, soon jumped drastically.
But along with the increase in cases, complaints began to surface from black shoppers who said they were victims of racial profiling in the store, on Madison Avenue. At least one shopper has filed a lawsuit against Barneys, and another plans to.
The lawsuits, which came to light last week and landed on the front page of The Daily News, attracted national attention for their allegations of race- and class-based discrimination. The suits raised criticism not only of Barneys, but of celebrity figures, like Jay-Z, who has a partnership with the store. They have also led to an inquiry by the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and on Tuesday there was an unlikely meeting of the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Barneys chief executive, Mark Lee.
Across town, at the flagship Macy's store at Herald Square, at least two black shoppers, one of them the actor Robert Brown, of the HBO series "Treme," have said they were similarly stopped this year by the police after, they said, store security workers deemed their purchases suspicious. Mr. Schneiderman's inquiry also includes Macy's.
None of those who have come forward to say they were detained by the police were charged with any crime.
The accusations were particularly troublesome for Macy's, which, in 2005, reached an agreement with the state attorney general's office to amend its security practices after investigators found black and Hispanic shoppers were disproportionately stopped on suspicion of shoplifting. That agreement ended in 2008. This year, said an official familiar with the current investigation who was not permitted to comment publicly on its details, the state attorney general has received close to a dozen complaints from shoppers who said they had been profiled by security officers at Macy's.
In the case of Barneys, the official said, the state attorney general is investigating allegations of similar treatment in cases besides the two shoppers pursuing litigation.
"It has come to our office's attention that there are problems with what is now called 'shop and frisk' with some major stores in New York," Mr. Schneiderman said at a news conference in Buffalo on Tuesday.
Mr. Schneiderman said the investigation would look at the policies in the stores as well as the relationship between store security officers and the New York Police Department. Both Macy's and Barneys have denied involvement in the episodes of detention of shoppers that have come to light.
"In both of these instances, no one from Barneys New York raised any issue with these purchases," Mr. Lee said on Tuesday, after emerging from his meeting with Mr. Sharpton in Harlem. "No one from Barneys brought them to the attention of our internal security, and no one from Barneys reached out to external authorities."
The Police Department disputed that account. In both cases, "N.Y.P.D. officers were conducting unrelated investigations and took action based on information brought to their attention by Barneys employees while in the security room," said John J. McCarthy, the department's chief spokesman.
At the center of the dispute at Barneys are two young black shoppers: Trayon Christian, 19, who has filed suit against the store and the city in State Supreme Court; and Kayla Phillips, 21, who filed a notice of intent to sue.
In his suit, Mr. Christian said the trouble occurred on April 29 after he bought a Salvatore Ferragamo belt with his Chase debit card. Several blocks away on Fifth Avenue, he said, he was stopped by plainclothes police officers.
The officers questioned his ability to pay for the belt, valued at about $350, and said the debit card must have been a fake, according to the suit. Mr. Christian was handcuffed and taken to the 19th Precinct station house where he was held, according to the suit, for about two hours before being freed.
Ms. Phillips described being "stopped, frisked, searched and detained" by the police at the store after a purchase at Barneys of a handbag valued at over $2,000.
Both stops, as well as two more related to shoppers at Macy's, were being investigated by the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau, Mr. McCarthy said.
The security changes Barneys put into effect were detailed by Raymel Cardona, a former assistant manager for loss prevention at the store, and a former plainclothes security guard, Aaron Argueta, 36. Both men were fired from Barneys, and intend to challenge their dismissals with federal employment authorities, said their lawyer, J. Patrick DeLince.
Aspects of their accounts were supported by Nafeesa Baptiste, a former sales associate of five years, who said she had increasingly found herself and her black customers — some of them well-known musicians and actors — followed by plainclothes security guards "from floor to floor."
She added that security agents frequently sought copies of receipts, in one case after a substantial cash transaction. "Because I had mostly men of color, it happened often to me," said Ms. Baptiste, 35.
She quit Barneys last month and has reported workplace harassment to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Representatives of Barneys strongly disputed the accounts of the former workers. Charlotte Blechman, the executive vice president for communications, described the two men as "disgruntled former employees," and singled out Mr. Argueta for installing a "bed and workout barbell in a company closet and sleeping on the job in the store multiple times." Mr. Cardona, his supervisor, was also "fired for cause," she said.
A year after the storm, the food line is one of many reminders of the persistent vulnerability of New York City's public housing and the hundreds of thousands of people who live in the projects.
There are the unrepaired leaks and the recurring mold in apartments, and in the ground-floor units that remain empty and uninhabitable. There is the unreliable heat from portable boilers, and the sinkholes that keep some playgrounds closed.
And there is the ocean, a block away for some residents, and the terror the Atlantic now inspires along a waterfront lined with public housing.
"I don't sleep good at night since then because I think my apartment is going to be flooded again," said Irma Pagan, 68, a resident of 47 years at O'Dwyer Gardens, a project across the street from the Coney Island boardwalk.
Ms. Pagan said that when she returned to her first-floor apartment two days after evacuating for the hurricane, "I came in here and I fainted on the floor — I never expected the destruction."
Now, she said, "I don't want to see the water; sometimes I don't even want to talk about what happened."
For many people living in public housing, the hardships unleashed by Hurricane Sandy left them perilously reliant on the New York City Housing Authority, even as the agency found it was unprepared for the storm and for the flooded boiler rooms and wrecked electrical systems that marked the aftermath. The city's largest landlord and the country's biggest local housing agency, Nycha, as it known, was inundated, and a year later it is still recovering.
Dozens of older and frail residents were trapped on high floors for weeks without power or medication. Portable generators and other emergency equipment were not readily available to replace lost light and heat. And the Housing Authority did not know where to find many of its most vulnerable tenants among the scores who failed to evacuate.
Coney Island — with nine public housing developments, high numbers of poor and infirm people, and an unobstructed view of the Atlantic — was hit hard. At O'Dwyer, a housing project with six high-rises and more than 1,000 residents, the power was not restored for over two weeks. Heat and hot water took even longer.
Complaints from public housing tenants against what they consider an unresponsive city bureaucracy are not new, but old maintenance problems have grown worse, and even the most resilient residents speak of a heightened sense of neglect — all at a time the Housing Authority is counting on their involvement to better prepare for the next disaster.
Housing officials are asking residents who are infirm or disabled to provide their medical information so the agency can share it with other city agencies to coordinate search rescue efforts; at least 900 have signed up so far, officials said. Residents are also being asked to volunteer as floor captains who would knock on doors and distribute food during an emergency and to prepare bags with cash and other essentials to be ready for evacuations.
But some tenant leaders say it is an uphill battle when so many are still coping with storm damage. At a recent preparedness meeting called by housing officials at O'Dwyer Gardens, fewer than 20 tenants showed up.
"Maybe because things are not done, they lost faith," Ilma Joyner, president of the O'Dwyer Resident Association, said. "Before Sandy people's faith was low, and a year later it's worse because people feel they're not being taken care of."
Housing officials said their buildings did better than many private buildings and that their biggest challenge was the large number of residents who did not heed evacuation orders.
Over the last year, officials say they have taken steps to better prepare for those who "shelter in place," such as tracking apartments with residents with medical and mobility issues, and forging partnerships to coordinate with the community groups that were first to reach stranded residents.
Officials said they were also working on long-term protections like raising or waterproofing heating and electrical equipment in the affected developments. But most of this is in the planning stages and awaiting money from insurance carriers and federal agencies.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq is to meet with President Obama Friday.
Mr. Maliki, who is scheduled to meet with Mr. Obama on Friday, has signaled that he wants the United States to provide sophisticated weapons, including Apache attack helicopters, so that the Iraqi government can fight Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups.
The letter, signed by ranking Democratic as well as Republican lawmakers, sought to put Mr. Maliki on notice that continued American support for Iraq would depend heavily on his willingness to share power with his nation's Sunni and Kurdish minorities.
Mr. Maliki, a Shiite politician who became prime minister in 2006 with the support of the American ambassador to Baghdad, has often been accused of being sectarian and authoritarian. Those tendencies, the senators wrote, made Iraq more fertile ground for insurgents who have been mounting attacks with increasing frequency.
"This failure of governance is driving many Sunni Iraqis into the arms of Al Qaeda in Iraq and fueling the rise of violence," the letter said.
Earlier on Tuesday, two of the senators spoke angrily in separate interviews about Mr. Maliki's failure to unify the competing factions in Iraq. "He's got a lot of work to do in terms of pulling together diverse elements of his country," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee. "He's not done a particularly good job of it."
Mr. Levin also criticized Mr. Maliki for acquiescing in, if not facilitating, Iran's efforts to supply weapons to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, using flights through Iraqi airspace. "They've allowed overflights, Iranian planes, to supply Syria," Mr. Levin said.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, which is to meet with Mr. Maliki on Wednesday, was even more critical of the Iraqi leader. "What he's done is create a situation where the population is more accepting of what Al Qaeda is doing there because of his lack of inclusiveness," Mr. Corker said.
The other senators who signed the letter were John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans who have long taken a strong interest in Iraq; Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the Senator Foreign Relations Committee; and James M. Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma who is the ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee.
In expressing alarm over the rising number of bombings and the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the senators also appeared to chide Mr. Obama for not being more outspoken about developments there.
The letter emphasized that Mr. Maliki's visit was an opportunity for Mr. Obama to "re-engage with the American people about the continuing strategic importance of Iraq."
The last American troops left Iraq at the end of 2011 under an agreement signed by President George W. Bush and Mr. Maliki. The United States and Iraq have signed an agreement calling for cooperation on security and economic issues. But critics say that such cooperation has never fully developed.
In their letter, the senators urged the president to step up American efforts to help Iraq's security force to fight terrorist groups, especially through the increased sharing of intelligence.
The senators stopped short of saying that such support should be withheld if Mr. Maliki did not adopt a more inclusive approach in governing. But they warned that the degree of American support for security assistance and arms sales would be influenced by Mr. Maliki's "governance strategy."
A major concern of many lawmakers is that American weapons supplied to the Iraqi government might be used by Mr. Maliki to crack down on his political opponents.
Mr. Maliki is leading a large delegation to Washington and is also scheduled to meet with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other senior officials.
In his remarks in Baghdad before flying to Washington, Mr. Maliki made clear that his priority was to secure support for sale of American arms and other forms of security assistance. "We will discuss security and intelligence in addition to arms needed by the military to fight terrorism," he said.
"It feels wonderful to be able to welcome visitors again," said David Luchsinger, superintendent of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, which includes Ellis Island. "It's overwhelming."
Mr. Luchsinger said he was determined to reopen the Ellis Island Immigration Museum before the anniversary of the hurricane, even though the site has not fully recovered. And he chose Monday, in part, because it was the 127th birthday of the Statue of Liberty.
By midday, hundreds of visitors, many of them international tourists, had disembarked from ferries to gaze at the Great Hall on the second floor of the main immigration building. The island was where 12 million immigrants arrived for processing between 1892 and 1954, when the federal venture closed for good. (It reopened as a historic site in 1990.)
Stephane Leroy of Paris was there with his son Simeon, 12. Mr. Leroy, 41, had visited Ellis Island 20 years ago and wanted to share it with his wife and son, but worried that it might not reopen in time for their vacation to New York City.
"We are flying back to France tomorrow morning, so we just made it," Mr. Leroy said.
The brick-and-limestone French Renaissance Revival building that serves as the centerpiece of Ellis Island was spared major structural damage during the hurricane. But the storm surge sent eight feet of water pouring into the basement, destroying the site's electrical, computing, phone, heat, water and sewage systems. Concerned about humidity levels and temperatures, officials moved two-thirds of the museum's collection into storage.
Permanent fixes are still being worked on. The goal, Mr. Luchsinger said, is to make all future systems resilient "in case, God forbid, another Sandy comes rolling through." By next May, a new electrical system should be placed out of harm's way on the second floor of the incinerator building, while a new heating and air-conditioning system able to withstand flooding will be installed in the basement.
Until that new heating system is in place, Ellis Island is using the building's radiators, which had sat silent and cold for years. Temporarily reviving the steam heat allowed the National Park Service, which runs the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, to reopen the site. Liberty Island reopened on July 4.
Mr. Luchsinger could have opened Ellis Island this summer, except for the absence of air-conditioning. During the next few months, he said, the million artifacts will be brought back from Maryland and placed in dozens of galleries, still closed, on either side of the Great Hall. On Monday, one gallery labeled "Peak Immigration Years" displayed a sign that read: "Area Closed. Do Not Enter."
Right before Hurricane Sandy hit, Ellis Island had opened a new permanent exhibition, called "Journeys: The Peopling of America 1550-1890." That exhibit is now back, and another installment, capturing the post-Ellis Island immigrant experience, will open next fall.
Jean Hart, of Newport Beach, Calif., was there for opening day with her son Andrew, a former New Yorker also from California. Ms. Hart's paternal grandparents, who were from Eastern Europe, had come through Ellis Island upon arriving in New York, and she was hoping to find some record of their brief visit.
"I had no idea what Ellis Island looked like," she said, taking in the 28,000 tiles that make up the vaulted ceiling. "It's really something."
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Ike Skelton, a Democratic congressman who was ousted in the Republican sweep of 2010 after serving his Missouri district for more than 30 years, died on Monday in Arlington, Va. He was 81.
Representative Ike Skelton in 2006. He lost his seat in 2010.
His death was confirmed by the law firm Husch Blackwell, where Mr. Skelton was a partner. He died at Virginia Hospital Center after a brief illness, according to a statement from his family.
Mr. Skelton, who was first elected to the House in 1976, was known as an expert on national defense and served as the chairman of House Armed Services Committee from 2007 until leaving office.
He was re-elected time and time again in a deeply conservative district that stretches from the Kansas City suburbs to the Ozarks, and he had a long record of supporting two local military institutions: Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base, which he secured as the base for the nation's fleet of B-2 bombers.
"He led an exemplary life of honor, courage and public service," Maurice Watson, the chairman of Husch Blackwell, said Monday in a statement. "His commitment to our country, the state of Missouri and the men and women who serve our nation in the armed services was unsurpassed."
Mr. Skelton was a social conservative who supported gun rights, opposed abortion rights and voted against President Obama's health care law. Before his defeat, he had not received less than 60 percent of the vote since 1982.
But that record was not enough to overcome the national tide of Republicans elected to the House in 2010. Representative Vicky Hartzler, the Republican who beat Mr. Skelton and still holds the seat, received support from many Tea Party members and tied him to Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, then the House speaker.
Mr. Skelton was born in Lexington, Mo., and won his first election in 1956 to become the prosecuting attorney in Lafayette County. He served in the Missouri State Senate before entering Congress.
After leaving the House, he became a partner at Husch Blackwell, working in its Missouri and Washington offices. He is survived by his wife, Patricia Martin, and three sons.
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No controversy, no ill-timed mistakes. Game 5 brought the World Series back to pure baseball.
Boston's 3-1 win belonged to Jon Lester, who emphatically answered those conspiracy theorists questioning the validity of his Game 1 performance by focusing on a substance seen inside his glove.
His glove was clean on Monday, and his pitching line was nearly spotless as well: seven and two-thirds innings, four hits, one run, seven strikeouts to send the Red Sox back to Fenway Park with a 3-2 Series lead.
David Ross, Lester's personal catcher, delivered the go-ahead R.B.I. single in the seventh, after David Ortiz, who finished 3 for 4, put Boston on the board with a run-scoring double in the first. Jacoby Ellsbury added an R.B.I. as well.
The Cardinals could manage only Matt Holliday's home run, and saw their ace, Adam Wainwright, lose for the second time in the Series.
The Red Sox storm back to Fenway Park with back-to-back wins and a chance to clinch the Series at home for the first time since 1918.
No chaos in the ninth? No errors or obstructions or pick-offs? How bizarre. But Boston's terrific closer Koji Uehara shut the door with a 1-2-3 inning to seal the 3-1 win. The game again finished with Carlos Beltran unable to swing the bat in the last inning.
Lester finishes after seven and two-thirds innings, allowing four hits and one run. Closer Koji Uehara strikes out pinch-hitter Matt Adams on three pitches to end the inning with a runner on second.
In a curious move, Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny opted not to pinch hit for the struggling shortstop Pete Kozma with a runner on second base. Lester got Kozma to fly out to left field for the second out.
This is a joke, right? Kozma is batting with a man on second in the 8th inning, down by two?
— Tyler Kepner (@TylerKepner) 29 Oct 13
In case you were wondering, Carlos Beltran is due up fourth in the bottom of the ninth inning for the Cardinals. If this 3-1 score holds, he could get another chance for a big hit (without the pickoff this time, perhaps).
After inexplicably walking Stephen Drew (who is 4 for 49) in the series, Wainwright gives up an R.B.I. double to the No. 8 hitter, David Ross. An Ellsbury single then brings Drew around for a 3-1 lead. But centerfielder Shane Robinson guns down Ross at the plate to end the inning.
So, 3-1 is where we stand. And another significant play is made at home plate.
Significant, too, was Boston Manager John Farrell's decision not to pinch hit for Jon Lester there, at less than 70 pitches. Though he made an out at the plate, Lester has pitched phenomenally.
It's haltime here at the Edward Jones Dome, where the Seahawks are beatng the Rams, 7-3. Game 5 of the World Series is being shown on the large screens in each end zone. Throughout the game here, people have gathered around TVs in the concourses to watch the Series. People in the stands have been checking their smartphones and listening on radios.
The stadium showed Matt Holliday rounding the bases here after home run helped the Cardinals tie the score, and it made for a funny moment. The Seahawks' offense was still huddling and the crowd let out this huge cheer that I'm sure surprised a few players.
— Tim Rohan
The Cardinals (finally) pitch carefully to David Ortiz, and Ortiz (finally) makes an out with a fly ball to center. He had reached in nine consecutive plate appearances, tying Cincinnati's Billy Hatcher's mark set in 1990.
It was the first time Big Papi had been retired since the second inning of Game 3. That was Saturday.
David Ortiz has 46% of the Red Sox total bases in this Series.
— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) 29 Oct 13
Matt Holliday ties the game, 1-1, in the fourth on an inside cutter that he blasted beyond the wall in center.
Then the next batter, Carlos Beltran, nearly gives St. Louis a lead, but his deep fly is caught at the warning track in left by Jonny Gomes.
Counting postseason, Lester is 0 for 34 in his career. Tim Lincecum said in Aug. he remembered Lester as a good-hitting 1B in high school
— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) 29 Oct 13
Cardinals put a runner into scoring position, but Lester gets out of the inning with a strikeout of Matt Carpenter that looked jussssstttt a bit outside. Carpenter spun around, eyes agape, in disgust. But that ended the inning.
Lester allows his first hit (to Beltran) in the second, and so far his stuff looks just as good as in Game 1. But there has been no sign of the odd green substance that was in his glove in his first start, which cause a minor online stir the day after.
After an R.B.I. double in the first, Ortiz is 9 for 12 this World Series and has reached base in eight consecutive plate appearances, one shy of a Series record. That is mindbogglingly good.
Adam Wainwright would up striking out the side, but no matter. 1-0 , Red Sox.
If only David Ortiz were hot…
— trey wingo (@wingoz) 29 Oct 13
Ellsbury CF
Pedroia 2B
Ortiz 1B
Gomes LF
Nava RF
Bogaerts 3B
Drew SS
Ross C
Lester SP
Carpenter 2B
Robinson CF
Holliday LF
Beltran RF
Molina C
Craig 1B
Freese 3B
Kozma SS
Wainwright SP
John G. Mabanglo/European Pressphoto Agency
Red Sox starter Jon Lester tossing the ball to first to record an out. He allowed one run and four hits in seven and two-thirds innings, striking out seven.
ST. LOUIS — There were no bizarre endings involving obstruction or pickoffs, this time, no balks or hidden-ball tricks, either, to end the game in some confusing and stunning fashion.
Game 5 of the 2013 World Series on Monday ended as hundreds before it have, with a routine out, but that was sweet enough for the Boston Red Sox, who beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-1, and are now one win from their eighth World Series championship.
Jon Lester pitched a magnificent game for the second time in the Series, earning his second win by holding the Cardinals to a home run by Matt Holliday over seven and two-thirds innings, and David Ortiz continued his remarkable run of success at the plate. Ortiz collected three more hits, including a run-scoring double, as his Series batting average rose to .733.
He also extended his streak of reaching safely to nine plate appearances, tying Billy Hatcher, who did it with the Cincinnati Reds in the 1990 World Series. With two home runs in the series, his slugging percentage plus his on-base percentage is an almost absurd 2.017.
"I was born for this," Ortiz said.
The Red Sox survived the three games in the National League ballpark without the use of the designated hitter, and now have two chances to close out the Series at Fenway Park and secure their third World Series title in nine years.
"I just told Jonny Gomes in the clubhouse," Lester said, "we show up Feb. 1, play 162, were at 180 total, now. It comes down to one game.
"Pretty special time."
Wednesday's game in Boston will be the first World Series Game 6 at Fenway Park since 1975, when Bernie Carbo's three-run pinch-hit homer set the stage for Carlton Fisk's game-ending blast in the 12th inning.
This series, with its 11 combined errors and mistakes at the plate and on the basepaths, is not shaping up nearly as neatly, but at least there were no glaring mistakes or errors in Game 5.
Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals starter, struck out 10 batters and pitched far better than he did in Game 1.
But he gave up two runs in the seventh inning after a big gaffe. After allowing a one-out single to Xander Bogaerts, Wainwright walked Stephen Drew, the weak-hitting Red Sox shortstop who came into the at-bat 1 for 14 in the Series and 4 for 49 to that point during this postseason.
"More than anything, walking Drew there, that really hurt," Wainwright said.
Drew said he was starting to see the ball better and was able to lay off some tough pitches.
"Bogie getting on right there and myself, it changed the game," Drew said.
David Ross immediately made Wainwright pay by lashing a ground-rule double into the left-field corner to drive in Bogaerts and break a 1-1 tie. One out later, Jacoby Ellsbury looped a base hit to center to bring home Drew, and even though Ross was thrown out at the plate, the Red Sox led, 3-1.
Boston opened the scoring with a run in the first when Dustin Pedroia and Ortiz hit back-to-back doubles as Boston snatched a 1-0 lead. Ortiz, who rallied his team with an impromptu dugout meeting in Game 4 on Sunday, now has six runs batted in over five games.
"That's why we call him Cooperstown," Ross said, "because he does Hall of Fame stuff."
Ortiz finally made an out in the sixth, but only when center fielder Shane Robinson caught a line drive that Ortiz scalded.
This Series has been characterized by its errors and mistakes, and two unusual endings. On Saturday, Game 3 ended on an obstruction call on Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks; on Sunday, Game 4 ended when Cardinals' pinch-runner Kolten Wong was picked off first base. Before this year, no World Series games had ended in either manner.
But Game 5, the last game at Busch Stadium this year, was a relatively crisp affair. Lester, with an unsolvable cutter, walked no one and struck out seven. He was in control until he was lifted for the closer Koji Uehara with two outs in the eighth.
He was so calm that when an enormous paper airplane sailed down from the stands and landed on the infield grass to the left of the dugout, he merely walked over and handed it to the bat boy. Then it was back to work. And after surrendering Holliday's home run in the fourth, he set down the next 12 batters he faced.
"He's our backbone," Ross said. "He's our horse when he's out there."
Ross also said that he already had a pit in his stomach thinking about Game 6 in Boston. Imagine how the Cardinals, who are on the brink of defeat, must feel.
"We'll be ready to win two tough games in Boston," Wainwright said.
GENEVA — International inspectors have completed verification of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal at 21 of the 23 sites identified by the government, but they have been unable to visit the other two because they are in contested areas in Syria's civil war, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said in a statement on Monday.
The organization said Sunday that inspectors would complete destruction of equipment for mixing chemicals and filling weapons by the start of November, an important milestone.
But no details are yet available on what kind of facilities are in the two sites inspectors have been unable to visit or the chances for gaining access to them, raising the prospect that Syria will miss some deadlines.
Despite this hurdle, a senior State Department official said Monday that the disarmament process was generally on track and that there "was reason to be optimistic."
Among the positive signs, the State Department official said, the Syrian government has presented a plan that "seems to be realistic" for the elimination of its chemical weapons arsenal that would allow the removal of precursor chemicals, which are used to make poison gas, so they could be destroyed outside Syria.
That is consistent with the disarmament approach favored by American officials, who believe that it would be the most efficient way to eliminate Syria's chemical arsenal by mid-2014 under a plan endorsed last month by the United Nations Security Council.
Just where the destruction of precursor chemicals will take place is not clear. Norway rejected an American request that mobile American destruction equipment be moved there to help destroy Syria's chemical arsenal. But the State Department official expressed confidence that other nations would agree to serve as destruction sites.
The United States is not among the possible destructions sites. Syrian officials have made it clear that they do not want to hand over their chemical arsenal to the United States, the official said.
He said he was encouraged by the progress in destroying mixing and filling equipment. A more formidable challenge is the destruction of bombs and warheads that are already filled with chemical agents. Russian experts are expected to assist in this task, which would be carried out in Syria.
Syria's declaration of its chemical arsenal, which was submitted last week, is 714 pages long, according to a European diplomat.
A central question is whether Syria has given complete details of its program and an arsenal estimated to include 1,000 tons of chemicals and nerve agents. Although Syria disclosed 23 sites, American officials said in September that they believed at least 45 sites were involved.
According to a European diplomat who has seen relevant documents, Syria has now reported the existence of 41 chemical weapons facilities at the 23 sites it disclosed, information that may help close the gap between Syria's disclosure and the figure initially stated by American officials.
It is also possible that Syria's efforts to consolidate its arsenal may account for the discrepancy. But American officials have not yet concluded that Syria has declared all of its sites where chemical weapons are developed, stored and tested.
The executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is likely to discuss Syria's declaration early next week and is expected to give its decision on the Syrian plan by mid-November. The sites where Syria's precursor chemicals are to be destroyed are to be identified by that time.
The two sites the inspectors have not visited are in "contested areas where you need some kind of cease-fire or guarantees for the safety of the inspectors," Michael Luhan, the agency's spokesman, said in a telephone interview. It is not clear whether opposition groups control either of the two sites or the territory that inspectors would have to travel through to reach them.
Responsibility for the inspectors' security, and therefore for negotiating access to sites, lies with the United Nations. Efforts to "ensure the conditions necessary for safe access to those sites will continue," the agency's statement said.
Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.
Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images
Koji Uehara celebrates with Mike Napoli after picking off the Cardinals' Kolten Wong in the bottom of the ninth to win Game 4.
ST. LOUIS — Jonny Gomes rounded first base, his right arm raised high. He pounded the "Boston" across his chest and let out a cathartic scream. He had just muscled a sinkerball over the left-field wall for a three-run homer, and was rounding first base screaming as if he wanted all of St. Louis to hear him.
The way the Boston Red Sox had lost Game 3 of the World Series, on an obstruction call at third base in the bottom of the ninth, seemed to only anger them. They did not let the sour mood linger, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-2, Sunday in Game 4, the victory sealed when Koji Uehara picked off the pinch-runner Kolten Wong with the tying run at the plate.
Gomes's towering home run, that hung in the sky seemingly tracing the arc of the Gateway Arch looming in the distance, helped the Red Sox even the Series at two games piece. Game 5 is here Monday before the Series shifts back to Boston for Game 6 on Wednesday. The Red Sox broke a 1-1 tie in the sixth when Dustin Pedroia singled, and David Ortiz walked on four pitches to chase Lance Lynn, the Cardinals' starter who had been nearly untouchable earlier in the night.
Seth Maness came in to relieve Lynn and face Gomes, who was only in the lineup because Shane Victorino had been scratched with tightness in his lower back. On a 2-2 pitch, Gomes took Maness deep to give the Red Sox a 4-1 lead.
"It was up, right down the middle, on a tee for him," Maness said.
With one swing, Gomes had done a lot of healing. Lynn was string at the start, pumping in 13 fastballs as he retiring the side in order in the first. He struck out Pedroia swinging on 96 mile-per-hour fastball. He pumped his fist and the Busch Stadium crowd roared as he walked off the mound.
He needed only 50 pitches to cruise through four innings. His only blemish to that point had been an infield single by Ortiz that had deflected off his own foot.
Clay Buchholz, meanwhile, appeared to be laboring, his fastball was sitting at 88 m.p.h. He had been dealing with a stiff right shoulder, a nagging injury that had cost him about three months during the season. In the postseason, he had posted a 5.40 E.R.A. and had not pitched past the sixth inning.
Before the Series started, Manager John Farrell said Buchholz would be pushed back to Game 4 at the earliest, giving him at least seven days off before Sunday's start.
"I don't think anybody, especially at this time of the season, is a hundred percent," Buchholz said.
He managed to squeak by until the third inning. Matt Carpenter singled on a ground ball to center, where the ball kicked off Jacoby Ellsbury's glove, allowing Carpenter to get to second base. Carlos Beltran followed with a single up the middle to score Carpenter.
But that was all the damage the Cardinals could do. Buchholz exited after four innings, having thrown 66 pitches and having done enough to keep the Red Sox close.
Boston got to Lynn in the fifth to tie the score at 1-1. Ortiz led off with a double before Lynn walked Gomes and Xander Bogaerts to load the bases with no outs. Stephen Drew drove him Ortiz on a sacrifice fly to left.
This game was shaping up to be another tight contest, just like the game before. Saturday's Game 3 had ended with both teams pouring onto the field, not everyone certain what exactly had happened.
With one out in the bottom of the ninth, the Red Sox brought the infield in as Jon Jay stepped to the plate with Yadier Molina on third and Allen Craig on second. Jay hit a grounder to Dustin Pedroia, who fired home to get Molina. Jarrod Saltalamacchia looked up and saw Craig heading to third and fired a throw to Will Middlebrooks that went wide of the bag. Middlebrooks tripped trying to catch the throw, and fell onto his stomach. As the ball squirted away, Craig took off for home and got tangled in Middlebrooks's legs. Left fielder Daniel Nava got off a throw that beat Craig to the plate, but he was ruled safe.
Jim Joyce, the third-base umpire, had called Middlebrooks for obstruction. The Red Sox were stunned.
Farrell was left to explain several questionable decisions. He had allowed reliever Brandon Workman to bat in the ninth with the score tied. He had not used Mike Napoli, his best weapon off the bench, to pinch-hit. And he opted not to walk Jay in the ninth, which would have brought up the light-hitting Pete Kozma.
Farrell said Sunday that he had not slept well Saturday night. But that he was confident in his team's leadership, and in their ability to put Game 3 behind them.
"We can't go back to yesterday," Farrell said.
There was less margin for error now, the Red Sox seemed to understand. Before the sixth inning, Ortiz appeared to give a pep talk in the dugout. Minutes later, Gomes homered. And Farrell, too, seemed more aggressive, mixing his relievers.
When Felix Doubront and Craig Breslow ran into trouble, allowing a run to score in the seventh, Farrell brought in Junichi Tazawa to shut the door. He had John Lackey, his Game 2 starter, pitch the eighth inning, and then turned to closer Koji Uehara for the ninth.
All together, they held the lead.
There was no controversy, no debate, no doubt about it this time, like the ball jumping off Gomes's bat. The Red Sox had won on their own talent and volition.
